Ramesh saved Tata's Damra port project

Tata's Damra Port, a big project in Orissa, escaped environmental action as Environment minister Jairam Ramesh took a lenient view despite his ministry officials reporting environmental violations.

Updated on: Jan 28, 2011, 20:24:59 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Tata's Damra Port, a big project in Orissa, escaped environmental action as Environment minister Jairam Ramesh took a lenient view despite his ministry officials reporting environmental violations.

"Had the construction (of the port) not commenced, we could have taken a decision unequivocally not to let the project proceed at the site whose forest status in disputed," Ramesh said, in a file noting overruling the view of his ministry officials that action should be initiated against the project proponents.

The ministry's regional office at Bhubaneshwar had found that the land on which the project was being developed was "unsurveyed, unclassified and undemarcated" and as per records should have been classified as forestland. The Orissa government had strongly refuted the claim but admitted that the land was unsurveyed and unclassified.

Damra port project is a joint venture between Tata Steel and Larsen and Turbo (L&T) situated between Haldia and Paradeep and will be deepest ports in India with a capacity of more than 100 million metric tonnes per annum.

The construction started in 2007 and the port is expected to be functional soon. While its near completion was considered, the goodwill of Tata Group of Companies in corporate social responsibility also played a role. "I have been conscious of this fact also," the noting said.

The noting was basis of the ministry's affidavit in the Supreme Court that no action is being initiated against Tata 's Damra Port project, which had hit headline for being close to endangered ridley olive turtle sanctuary in Gahirmatha, Orissa.

Convinced that there was ambiguity over status of the land, the minister, however, refrained from blaming the ministry officials for granting approval without considering the key fact. "I was persuaded that at the time of granting approval the evidence may have been insufficient or inadequate to insist on clearance under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980," an official said.

If the project would have come for approval now, the minister made it clear that the forest clearance would have been required. "Today, we will have no option but to insist on clearance under FCA," the noting, quoting the minister said.

Finally, Ramesh said it was not open and shut case, which has been made worse by incontrovertible fact that the land used by the port is unsurveyed, unclassified and undemarcated.

In a related development, the Delhi High Court on Friday refused to grant an interim injunction against NGO Greenpeace India

Vindicating Greenpeace India's stand, the Delhi High Court today refused to grant an interim injunction to TATA Sons against Greenpeace India's 'Turtle vs TATA' pacman style game. The game was launched in 2010 to as part if the NGO campaign against the port project said to be sensitive to the endangered Olive Ridley Turtles.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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